The use of HL7 as an interoperability framework in a regional healthcare system in Greece, Journal of Telecommunications and Information Technology, 2005, nr 4

The integration of information systems represents one of the most urgent priorities of a regional healthcare authority in order to meet its clinical, organizational and managerial needs. Current practice shows that the most promising approach to achieve a regional healthcare information system is to use a health level 7 (HL7) messagebased communication system implemented by an asynchronous common communication infrastructure between healthcare sites. The system is a complete and integrated information system at a regional level that comprises all types of healthcare levels, that includes interoperability issues, that covers most of the needed components, and that is able to work efficiently in a secure wide area network to ensure data privacy and confidentiality. Another important feature of the proposed solution is that it creates an interoperability framework that can be replicated from one healthcare institution to another. In that sense, common interoperability messages can be used to interconnect heterogeneous information systems. In response to this strategy, more than 10 different consortiums have submitted proposals to the Greek government and the proposed interoperability framework seems to be widely accepted as a solution to enhance information and communication technologies developments in the healthcare sector in Greece

Future of Data Analytics in the Era of the General Data Protection Regulation in Europe

The development of evidence to demonstrate ‘value for money’ is regarded as an important step in facilitating the search for the optimal allocation of limited resources and has become an essential component in healthcare decision making. Real-world evidence collected from de-identified individuals throughout the continuum of healthcare represents the most valuable source in technology evaluation. However, in the European Union, the value assessment based on real-world data has become challenging as individuals have recently been given the right to have their personal data erased in the case of consent withdrawal or when the data are regarded as being no longer necessary. This act may limit the usefulness of data in the future as it may introduce information bias. Among healthcare stakeholders, this has become an important topic of discussion because it relates to the importance of data on one side and to the need for personal data protection on the ot